Archive for the ‘Announcement’ Category

After weeks of hard work, we present to you the new and shinier version of Epistory with Mod & Profiles (multiple saves) support and more... You spoke and we listened. We understand it would have been better for most of you to receive the update in chunks over the weeks but given the amount of changes it was a lot easier for us to handle one big transition to the new version instead of several small incremental versions. We even had to stop planning for a workshop beta. Without further ado, here’s the changelist.

Hi Fox Riders! The moment has come to announce that Epistory – Typing Chronicles will leave early access and be released on Steam on the 30th of March 2016. We are so enthousiastic and we can’t wait to read your feedback about the last chapters of the game. So, if the game isn’t yet in your Steam library, it’s you last chance to get it at the Early Access price! As a bonus, find below some screenshots of the upcoming chapters and a short teaser made with love. See you on the community hub!

Hello to the Creatures community. Many of you have heard or read that the development on Creatures Online was halted. We wanted to make an official statement as things haven’t been communicated very clearly as far as we know and we have been receiving a lot of messages from the community on our channels (FB, Twitter and such…).

So while it saddens us a lot, the development of Creatures has effectively been put on hold since September last year due to many reasons we can’t legally talk about. At the moment we stopped the development, we can say that the game was close to Alpha with all races, toys, environments, crafting system, AI, genes, ecosystem and recycling machine in place, we were really close to be ready for a softlaunch. To achieve that stage, the team pulled out tremendous efforts over the past 3 years and the last moments of development were a pretty difficult period for the team. As the publisher and legal owner of the IP, Big Ben made the call to pause the development of the project. Regardless of our implication with the game and its loyal community, we are not in a situation that allows us to change this decision.

We are very sorry that the old time Creatures community is left in the dark, we truly feel this is a waste of great, positive energy and good will from all of you and we wish the situation could be different. Pausing the development so close to release is still something we are recovering from, it is now in Bigben Interactive’s hands to keep you informed on what will happen next. Throughout the development of the game, with its ups and downs, we tried to have a very transparent communication on the development as we know you are such a great community, with great expectations too. We hope you appreciated this approach as much as we did.

We also received several complaints about the status of the official Creatures forums being spammed and invaded by bots, please note that Fishing Cactus has no control over those channels anymore (including forums and websites). This work was originally handled with great care by Sophie who was doing the community management and curation, Lucas and Andrea who were providing updates and posts to keep you updated on the progress of the game.

As far as Fishing Cactus is concerned, the future of Creatures Online now lies fully into Big Ben Interactive’s hands. Despite what angry people might say, we have poured really a lot of efforts, energy and love in the Creatures game and we wish it will see the light of day, someday, somehow.

Update: We didn’t make it but we’d like to thanks all the people who voted for Epistory. Next year you’ll do it!

Hi Folks,

It’s the 6th Annual Indie of the Year Awards, a celebration of this year finest indie games chosen by indies fans. If you could give us a hand and vote for Epistory on IndieDB it would be great. The top 100 will be announced on the 11th of December. Let’s do our best!

After fighting an insectile corruption and embracing the power of fire, we left our heroine and her companion at the edge of the Forgotten Forest. Along the treacherous, twisting paths of her adventure, she began to uncover the secret pieces of her story. Now she must fight not to drown under the crushing weight of uncertainty and fight with dignity to restore her inner peace.

Discover new enemies, learn new magic and explore two brand new dungeons full of mystery. Be brave; for there is no turning back on the way to the truth.

After a bug in our save system was found, we cannot guarantee compatibility between the update and the current (Halloween) version. Depending on where you last left the game it will work, or not. Regardless of the state of the save, we recommend a new game because of the work that has been done in the first two dungeons.

Please be aware that this update marks the end of our early bird pricing. Epistory now be fixed at $12.99 due to the major updates that have been done since launching on Early Access.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us on this adventure so far. We hope you will enjoy this new chapter and we can’t wait to hear your feedback!

As promised, Epistory – Typing Chronicles is now available on Linux and Mac! If you encounter any bugs please give us a heads up and we’ll fix them as soon as possible.

The challengers amongst you will be pleased to find the new “Arena” mode in the main menu. It’s a special place where the world will finally recognize the value of your typing skills. We’re still working on the leaderboard that should come soon. It’s also a bit rough around the edges.

Note that Spanish language has been added to the game. More languages to come during the Early Access.

Here’s the patch note for the new version:

New Features

Added: Infinite Battle “Arena” mode, where you’ll soon be able to challenge yourself and get your name at the top of the leaderboard.

Added: Linux version

Added: Mac version

Added: Spanish version

And plenty of stuff behind the scene for the upcoming Chapter 2…

Various improvements

Removed magic effect on enemies’ last word.

Special characters are displayed when the required magic is locked.

Reworked “Burning Hollow” level design.

Reworked story in “Forgotten Forest“.

Bug fix

Fixed: typing the word while it moves result in some letters not colored properly.

Fixed: avatar moving using the last letter of a word typed if the typing mode auto switch is triggered.

Fixed: auto typing mode switch was not happening if an untypeable (fire) word was displayed

For the next few days we will focuson ironing out the bugs and quirks that were reported. Most notably any save bug that you or we encounter. The game is currently playable in several settings but the save is sometimes a bit dodgy so that is our top priority.

Then, in the coming weeks, we will continue to produce the next chapter of the game. We should be able to deliver it in a month. A month and a half, maximum.

We will of course do minor content release in between chapters with stuff like improved UI and feedback, bug fixes & general polish. We want to avoid players going through a new chapter while it’s only half done because it will ruin part of the joy of discovery.

We are also going to create an unstable branch for the game so you can try our latest advancements before we make it available for everyone. We may also add a separate branch for people wanting to try the new areas before they are finished if you ask for it.

Hi folks! We are so glad to announce the release of Epistory on Early Access. See you the 30thofSeptember on Steam. Meanwhile, you can visit the Steam page of Epistory and put it in your wish list: http://store.steampowered.com/app/398850